I'm sure it sounds as though I'm being a bit hard on "emo" music and that's because it sucks. Don't believe me? Let's start by focusing on the vocal style. Again I am quoting:
"The vocal style is usually much more intense than emocore, ranging from normal singing in the quiet parts to a kind of pleading howl to gut-wrenching screams to actual sobbing and crying. Straight-edge boys tend to hate that part, and much derision is levelled at emo bands on this point. Most emo bands tend to have some epic-length songs that build up very slowly to a climax where someone cries. If you're receptive to this kind of thing, it can be extremely powerful and moving, since it's very hard to fake that kind of pure emotion convincingly."
Okay the normal singing part is good. Singing takes talent so I can deal with that. A pleading howl sounds kind of stupid and gut-wrenching screams are just annoying unless your the lead singer of Drowning Pool or Linkin Park in which case it just sounds awesome. The suckiest part though is the actual sobbing and crying on the part of the singer. What a pansy. I don't want to hear some band play through a song and have the lead singer burst into tears like a kid that doesn't get his way or some little kid that gets picked on at the play-ground. I figure that's where a lot of these punkers get their motivation from. "I was bullied as a kid and was too much of a little pantywaist to defend myself so I'll make every one think I'm tough by dressing tough, getting tattooed, doing drugs, and screaming at the top of my lungs while playing bad music. Then people will think I'm cool and won't mess with me because I'm being adored by thousands of other loser kids who didn't learn to defend themselves and get a back-bone and decided to be a poser like me. I'm SPECIAL!! YAAAYY!!" I don't want to hear you scream and then cry like a little girl. If your going to play punk-rock or anything even remotely heavy don't be such a crybaby. I don't want to hear about your problems. "It's very hard to fake that kind of pure emotion convincingly." I agree. It is hard to fake being a little pansy crybaby so why not just be one in real life. You people suck. Next let's talk about the lyrics to most "emo" songs. Again I quote to you: Vocals and lyrics aren't the only thing that leaves everything to be desired about "emo music". The music quality is so bad it makes Yoko Ono sound like Amy Lee from Evanescence. Don't believe me? How about another quote like this one: Apparently "Hardcore Emo" contains all of the trash and more that is included in standard "emo". How can anybody listen to this stuff? The vocals are freakishly horrible, the lyrics have no depth, the music is literally noise, and the concerts are pointless. "Emo" is crap. Speaking of people who listen to "emo", they're losers too. I found an entire website dedicated to how to dress "emo". Apparently girls have to look like nerds, guys have to look like drug addicts, both sexes have to look like goth-rejects, and they have to conform to crappy music standards. Quit feeding into this junk people. Get your own personalities! Nobody thinks your cool because you dress like a slob, have bad taste in music, and walk around moody and brooding all the time. All that does is make people look down on you. The longer you keep playing the victim the more people will victimize you and round and around the circle goes. Take some pride in yourself and then you won't need to try and fit in because people will respect you and treat you better. As far as I know, that's what you've been striving for all along isn't it?"Lyrics tend toward somewhat abstract poetry, and are usually low in the mix and hard to decipher. Record inserts have lyrics, but often so disorganized and haphazard that they're very difficult to read [unless the record was released on Ebullition Records, in which case there are many inserts on small, brightly-colored papers containing poetic writing from the label owner and all his friends about disillusionment, anger, and things that happened when the writer was four. Such writing is known as emo writing, and there are many, many zines just like that]. Said inserts are almost always done with antique typewriters or miniscule hand-lettering, containing no punctuation or capitalization. Often the only information about the band listed is the band members' first names. Another trait of really emo records is to have no information whatsoever about song titles."
Not only do the vocals suck but the lyrics are completely pointless and written about things that the song-writer should have gotten over but rather than do that he decided to play the victim in order to get attention from other sympathetic losers who should have gotten over things that happened when they were younger. Also, what good are the lyrics if nobody can decipher them, read them, or hear them? You might as well let a new-born baby babble and spit into the microphone because that's about how powerful your song is going to be. Write some lyrics that have some depth to them or don't write anything at all and quit writing about stuff that happened when you were a kid like the time you wet the bed and nobody cared. Nobody cares about that crap because it's pointless, shallow, and immature."Similar to punk vs. hardcore punk - faster, louder, harder, much more intense and single-minded. Most of these bands play extremely fast, and introduce the "chaos" concept to hardcore. This is extremely abrasive music, with vocals screamed at the physical limit of the vocal chords. The guitars are distorted to the point that notes and chords are hard to recognize - although often the guitarists don't even play notes, instead making piercing, staccato bursts of noise, squeals of deafening feedback, or a wash of strummed dissonance. The bass often has quite a bit of distortion as well, unlike straight emo. This is everything emo done more so - sometimes so totally over the top that the band 's songs are not even recognizable when performing live. Antioch Arrow, for instance, thrashed about so much on stage that they sounded less like a band than a giant amplified blender. After each song, they had to retune every string, and usually had knocked over a good fraction of their equipment. These shows tended also to be quite short for reasons of the band's physical endurance."
Am I the only one who thinks that bands who use so much distortion to the point of not being able to tell one song from the other suck? According to the above quote the bands don't even so much play notes as they do hit a chord and deafen the crowd with total noise? I now understand why most people who don't listen to rock think that it is only noise and screaming. It's because people like these no-talent hacks butcher music because they have no talent whatsoever. Their concerts are short too because nobody can hear them so I ask you, what is the point? If the fans can't hear or understand the band apparently that means the band sucks and their fans jump onto the bandwagon because the've been told that "emo" is a true form of expression when instead it expresses nothing but a lack of ability. Apparently this isn't even hardcore as implied by the following statement:"All the other notes about emo records, shows, economics, etc. apply to hardcore emo too. It's very much simply a subset of emo. In my eyes, this was the ultimate expression of the form. There was a frantic, primal quality to a band like Heroin that could just reach through your ribcage and squeeze your heart like in the Temple of Doom. I never found that in any of the other types."
